Monthly Archive

Zika virus has certainly been in the news lately, especially since it has been diagnosed in several patients in the US. Zika is a mosquito-borne viral illness that causes fever, pain and burning of the eyes. It is a mild illness and has no specific treatment but the danger of Zika comes from the fact that pregnant women who have the disease have a higher incidence of having infants with birth defects, especially microcephaly.

I recently saw a young mother in the clinic with an infant who was developmentally delayed. The mother was concerned because the one-year old child wasn’t yet standing by herself or walking. When I examined her, it seemed that she most likely has a mild form of microcephaly. The mother stated that she did have a fever while she was pregnant. Whether that fever was Zika or not, we’ll never know. But it is possible that the virus was responsible for infant’s birth defect.

As many of you know, we have been functioning in the clinic with our pharmacy temporarily located in the same room as our registration desk and medical records. The “actual” pharmacy is located in the adjacent lab/xray/pharmacy building but we were unable to move into that area because we didn’t yet have wooden windows installed. Well, thanks to our most recent employee Viel Laurent, our windows are now in place and two weeks ago we moved the pharmacy into its rightful place. Look at the results below:

Shelves in the new pharmacy with bins for medications

Cherlie and pharmacy technician Guy-Johns Chevalier stand in front of the new pharmacy shelves.

Over the next few weeks we hope to be able to move most of the stock medications from our house down in Jérémie up to the clinic pharmacy. What a relief that will be! Pray with us that we will soon be able to install windows in the laboratory area as well and get it set up to do more advanced laboratory testing.